Jesse Jackson asks union shipbuilders to campaign for Obama

NEWPORT NEWS — With just days before Virginia helps determine the nation's next president, labor leaders, Democratic politicians and the Rev. Jesse Jackson made an emotional appeal to union shipyard workers to help win the state for President Barack Obama.

Jackson ended his speech by making the case for Obama's record so far in the White House.

"How do you judge a president four years later?" he asked.

To the refrain, "the arrow is pointing up," Jackson argued the case for re-election: "More Americans have health care.… More women have pay equity.… Fewer Americans are losing homes to foreclosures.… Our sons and daughters are coming home from Iraq."

Other speakers, including United Steelworkers' international president Leo Gerard and U.S. Rep. Robert C. "Bobby" Scott, D-Newport News, asked shipbuilders in the crowd to make sure their friends and relatives get out to the polls on Election Day.

Scott pointed to a jobs report released Friday that stated the country added 171,000 jobs in October.

"We're going in the right direction," he said. "We're going too slow … but the last thing we need to do is turn around and go back into the ditch we're digging ourselves out of."

"If we win Virginia, it's over," shouted Scott, whose district includes the shipyard. Disagreeing with political analysts who have said Ohio is the key to winning the White House, Scott said Obama can lose in Ohio, win in Virginia and "we still win."

"Is the 47 percent ready to vote?" he asked, a reference to a comment GOP nominee Mitt Romney made at a private fundraiser, that 47 percent of Americans refuse to take responsibility for their own lives.

The rally and reception drew more than 200 people to the union hall on a cool November day. On the second floor of the hall large posters laid out block walking and phone-bank schedules. A speaker thanked a union member who canceled an event he had scheduled over the weekend at the hall so the Obama campaign could use the space for a final get-out-the-vote effort.

Vincent Sinclair, a shipbuilder who started working at Newport News Shipbuilding 55 years ago as a welder, said he plans to volunteer in any way possible to help Obama between now and Tuesday.

"I was on the phone yesterday from 4 to 6 p.m.," he said.

Scanning the crowd, he said, "That 47 percent is all these people out here, and all these people who work at the shipyard."